A skewer is a tactic where you attack a valuable piece and force it to move, exposing a piece behind it on the same line — which you then capture. Think of it as a pin turned inside out: the big piece is in front, so when it dodges, whatever was hiding behind it gets taken.
Like the pin, only the long-range pieces skewer — bishop, rook, and queen — along a rank, file, or diagonal. The most brutal skewers are checks: when the front piece is the king, it has to move (a king can’t ignore check), so the piece behind it is doomed. That’s why the skewer is sometimes called a “reverse pin” or “x-ray attack.”
The 10-second version
- A skewer attacks a valuable piece with something less valuable behind it.
- The front piece is forced to move (best of all: it’s a check).
- You grab the piece it was shielding.
A quick example
The bishop on b2 gives check along the long diagonal to the king on e5. Behind the king, on the very same diagonal, sits the queen on h8. Black must answer the check by moving the king off the line (say Ke6), and then Bxh8 collects the queen. A lowly bishop wins a queen — that’s the skewer in a nutshell — and with the rook still on d1, White is left with king, rook, and bishop against a bare king, an easily winning endgame.
Related terms
This is the short version — our full skewer guide shows more patterns and how to set them up, and you can drill it on the skewer puzzles page. Browse the tactics hub or the chess glossary for more. The skewer is the mirror image of the pin, and it rounds out the core toolkit with the fork and the discovered attack.
Mini-FAQ
What’s the difference between a skewer and a pin? It’s about which piece is in front. In a pin, the valuable piece is behind and shielded. In a skewer, the valuable piece is in front and gets forced to move, giving up the piece behind it.
Can only bishops skewer? No — any long-range piece can. Rooks skewer along ranks and files, the queen does both, and bishops skewer along diagonals.
Written and fact-checked by the Chess Lab Academy Editorial Team (AI-assisted, human-edited) · Position legality-checked with python-chess · Definition verified against Wikipedia and standard references · Last verified 2026-07-13 · How we verify content.